Rawson Projects is pleased to announce Bahareh Khoshooee's solo show opening on Thursday, September 14th from 6–8pm.

An interview between the artist and the gallery follows:

Rawson Projects: First, I just want to say that we're really excited to be debuting this new video work you're freaking out ok at the gallery. Since we showed your work in the spring as a part of A Process Series II, (which was first shown in the Nasty Women Exhibition at the Knockdown Center in January), you recently graduated from your MFA program and just completed a residency at Ox-Bow. How has your work evolved over the last six months and where do you see your practice now in light of current events?

Bahareh Khoshooee: Thanks for inviting me back; I’m excited as well. My practice is constantly changing and evolving in response to my environment– events, news, information, books, movies, social media, etc. Since the core concept of my work revolves around the notion of identity, my surrounding is basically what feeds my practice. What has influenced my decision making process aesthetically is the continued exploration of the relationship between video and space– that is how different modes of display can change the actual meaning of the work. Fluidity in ways of presentation seems to be the perfect platform to portray identity fluidity as well.

RP: How did you first come to the medium of video in your work? Do you have a personal connection to video? How does your background inform your work?

BK: In my first attempt towards video making, I realized that the complexity of interrelated ideas in my mind could not be communicated fully through any other medium. Most of my relationships have become pixel-based after my immigration to America. Feeling fragmented myself, I have become more interested in incorporating glitch and image interruption in the work.

RP: Lastly, what is the inspiration behind you're freaking out ok? How did your ideas for this work come about and was that process new for you?

BK: It all started from the video Pigasus that is now being projected onto the layered screens for the exhibition. Pigasus is a reference to the 1968 campaign by the Youth International Party: Pig for President. Pigasus, a 145-pound domestic pig, was nominated for president of the United States as a theatrical gesture. Utilizing satire as a practical form of resistance, Yippies appropriated the idiom ‘when pigs fly’ in order to represent the absurdity of the socio-political predicament that Americans were coping with. Humor and theater became their peaceful and yet trenchant weapons throughout the protests.

Appropriating Yippies’ technique, my installation has become a response to our current socio-political state. A female superhero, my alter ego Ba Bi Bu, runs through alternative realities, while gazing at the viewer and exposing her tongue out of her mouth. She has brought the flaring Pigasus back once again: to save humanity, to ridicule the authorities. The other video piece in the exhibition is titled Depends on the Sun’s Angle. In that video, a female character is trying to operate a nose job with clear tape while taking selfies with a pig doll. The juxtaposition between the two pieces to me is reflective of the current state of mind that many younger people are struggling with. The abundant access to information and news combined with social media culture has resulted in a virtual sub-culture that is constantly trendisizing social actions.

Although it is important to educate and invite people to acknowledge political, social, and environmental issues, we also need to be aware of the downside: turning a crisis into a likeable/sharable/forgettable/ephemeral commodity.

Bahareh Khoshooee was born in Tehran, Iran, in the year of the goat, 1991. The artist received her BA in Industrial Design from University of Tehran and is a recent MFA graduate from the University of South Florida. Her work was recently featured in the Museum of Fine Arts Saint Petersburg, USF Contemporary Art Museum, and she served as an artist-in-residence at the Ox-Bow residency this Summer.

Bahareh Khoshooee's two-person exhibitions include MirrorDrain (Centre Gallery) and Milk Spreads Its Coat (PortSpace) with Ben Galaday, and RunRunRun a collaboration with Victoria Trespando (William and Nancy Oliver Gallery). Khoshooee's work has been featured in The Huffington Post, The Guardian, HyperAllergic, Artnet News, Vice, The Metro, and The Creators Project.